Breakfast for Brexit has flavour of Europe

WITH the looming EU referendum splitting the Tory Party in two, the Brexit and pro-EU camps went head to head yesterday morning in a bid to grab early risers.

As is customary, the two rival fringe events offered free breakfast to hungry delegates.

But did the caterers mix up the orders? Members at the Brexit fringe were offered a continental breakfast of croissants, pastries and fruit. Meanwhile, over at the pro-EU event, delegates tucked into greasy British bacon rolls.

At the Brexit fringe meeting, keynote speaker Dr Liam Fox received a lukewarm response as he tried to convince members to vote ‘Leave’. Is that perhaps because he stole the SNP’s phrase book from the 2014 independence referendum?

During his speech, he simply substituted ‘ Scotland’ for ‘ Britain’, pleading for people to ‘stop talking Britain down’ and calling for ‘sovereignty’ to be returned to these islands.

He also claimed the Leave campaign is ‘coming up from the grassroots of the country’ – mirroring the claims of the doomed Yes to independence campaign.

The referendum debate continued to dominate proceedings throughout the day in Edinburgh: one passionate Europhile even attempted to welcome David Cameron by waving a giant EU flag as he took to the stage for his keynote speech.

Alarmed aides spotted the elderly gentleman in the nick of time and prevented an awkward encounter that would have done nothing to heal wounds in the divided party.

Mr Cameron is unlikely to wrap himself in the EU flag any time soon. He closed his speech with an appeal to delegates to ‘drape ourselves in red, white and Saltire blue’.